What they don't know
by Echante
Summary: Read and review to find out! Haha One-shot...


This is a one-shot I wrote just because... Please read and review!

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What Derek doesn't know, and what Mark and Addison know all too well, is that Mark was born and raised a couple yards to the left of Addison's five roomed mansion. He doesn't know that whatever time Mark spent away from Derek and his five sisters, consisted of rooftop rendezvous to watch sappy girly sunsets and play childish games with a fiery haired and tempered little girl.

What Mark and Addison know all too well, and Derek can't seem to recall is that Mark's pathological pull towards anything with boobs and a vagina proved absent until the ripe age of fifteen. Derek doesn't remember because he was never told, that his best friend and the future love of his life, made-out for half an hour on her porch swing. He didn't know about her because Mark doesn't tell him, maybe because of his shyness at the time, which interfered with their fervent swapping of life stories, or maybe because fate intervened and refused to allow Mark to allude to his first conquest.

What Derek doesn't know, is that the next day, Mark shoplifted his first box of condoms. Derek doesn't know that in sleeping with his wife, he is following the foot-steps of his best friend.

What Derek doesn't know, and Mark can't seem to tell him, is that a friendship that he thought ended at midnight on a Friday, began to crack on a Saturday twenty years before, in a house too empty and too devoid of people to be called a home.

What Derek doesn't know is that Addison cried after the first time, and Mark, still awkward and with his unfulfilled muscles still fighting to tighten, hugged her to him, whispering soothing words.

What Mark doesn't know, and what Addison doesn't tell him, is that the next year filled those unfulfilled muscles, and chiseled out of his previously rounded face, a striking image. What Mark doesn't know, and Addison writes off as the distant past is that when he switched schools to be with Derek, she had interpreted the action as avoidance. Mark doesn't know that this time, she cried alone and resolved not to ever give herself over to a man again.

Addison doesn't know that he watched her sometimes, lazily flicking his curtains to the side and peering towards the light to see her tanning by the pool. He doesn't tell her that she doesn't get any tanner; he doesn't tell her that it doesn't matter.

What neither Mark nor Derek knows is that she doesn't get kissed for another year, and that she knew she was still gawky and tall and awkward, with stringy hair and frumpy clothing. Mark and Derek don't know that she cried herself to sleep and drank her father's whiskey whenever Mark brought a girl home. Mark barely knows, and Derek only hears that Skippy Gold asked her out a quarter into junior year, and she said yes. They don't know her braces get caught in his, and they spent an hour trying to detach them.

Addison doesn't know that she'd have been with Mark the entire time if it weren't for the friend he'd brought home who degraded her verbally when he saw her by the pool. Addison doesn't know that Derek and Mark don't talk for a year because of social boundaries. Addison doesn't know why Mark only brings girls to his house, and never guys, and he doesn't tell her it was because of the first friend who'd judged her.

Addison doesn't know that Mark starts bringing guys home when her braces come off and her mosquito bites become breasts. She doesn't know that he's ashamed of his friends because he always thought she was beautiful. She doesn't realize that her pale skin finally starts to darken after countless hours of worthless tanning, and her long boney legs start to add skin and her waist starts to curve. She's oblivious to the fact that the boys who she thought were hopelessly absent had been throwing themselves at her all this time; because she's too preoccupied with studying to turn and see the wake of men behind her. She spends her days peeking at Mark behind the barrier of her curtain, and he doesn't know that when he looks up at times towards her room, he is inadvertently meeting her gaze. He doesn't know the thrill that shocks down her spin and the deeps blush that appears before she looks away. He doesn't know that she sees him.

Mark doesn't know, and I suppose, neither does Derek, that one day, Addison looked into the mirror and realized that the cat-calls and not so subtle glances towards her were not in jest, but because she'd finally grown into the over-extended body God gave her. Mark didn't know that Skippy Gold, a figment of the long past was out of the picture. If he'd known, he wouldn't be able to comprehend how a girl like her could be single for so long. If he'd known, then he might have rushed over and swept her off her feet, betraying every word he ever uttered against cheesy chick movies.

Derek didn't know that late one rainy Sunday during spring break, before Mark left for Cancun with him, and before Addison headed to Philadelphia, she appears on his doorstep, long red hair illuminated in the plastic light. Derek doesn't know that Mark reached out to touch it, and traced his finger along the outline of her jaw in the process. He doesn't know that Mark grabbed her chin and pulled her towards him, in a deep kiss. He doesn't know that the romance that began and ended three years previous, began again. He doesn't know that they needed the condom for a second time.

Derek doesn't know that when they got back, Mark did NOT tire of all the girls in his school and move on to other districts. He doesn't know that whenever Mark told him he was 'with a girl' it was the same girl, for six whole months. He doesn't know that is the longest Mark's stayed faithful to one woman.

Addison doesn't know that Mark plans and plans an elaborate way to ask her to prom. She doesn't understand that his history is littered with flowers and the question, never adding cleverness or creativity into the mix. She can't comprehend exactly how special she was in his life, because he doesn't tell her. So she doesn't know.

Mark and Addison both don't know, and I suppose by proxy Derek doesn't either, that on the night they broke up, they walked their separate ways only to end up in the same condition, alone and crying.

Derek doesn't know that by taking Addison's hand, and leading her towards his best friend, he was reintroducing, as opposed to introducing. He doesn't recognize Mark's grin as too wide, or see that it is an illusion to suppress the urge of Mark's jaw to fall.

The world doesn't know that incompetence leads to calamity. People don't know the jurisdiction of knowledge over happiness, and how communication leads to easiness. Fate doesn't understand its great opponent is reluctance. But 12 years from their second reunion, Mark and Addison enlighten the world on the laws of creation and soul mates. Of two people made to find each other. That separation doesn't halt the will of fate, it only slows it down.

Derek will never be able to comprehend the history behind the day his ten year marriage and lifelong friend ship collapsed. But Mark and Addison know that comprehension is a funny thing, and they know that it will lead him to his own fate.

One week later he lands in Seattle and enters a bar…


End file.
